


Owed You One.

by NoHolds



Category: Uncharted
Genre: Also if you don't like reading about people bleeding out you should steer clear, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, Uncharted 2, a fucked up weird cyclical relationship with danger ft. Nathan Drake, uncharted 3 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 15:19:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4710758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoHolds/pseuds/NoHolds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You have no idea,” Nate says, “How afraid I was that I was going to lose you.”</p><p>Elena pauses for a moment, looks out over the mountains, and doesn't know quite how to respond.</p><p>“Nate,” she says eventually, “You know I like you. But that is the stupidest thing you've ever said to me.”</p><p>(Or, Elena Fisher almost dies, and Nathan Drake is the world's biggest hypocrite when he ribs her for making him worry)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Owed You One.

 Elena Fisher has faced worse odds. 

Really, she has.

She can't think of an example, at the present moment, but she's definitely faced worse odds.

Probably. 

After all, it's not as if Elena is some suburban housewife. She's a damn investigative journalist. She dragged a beat-up camera through the ruins of El-Dorado, and, harder still, she dragged a beat-up _camera man_ through the ruins of Nepal, and-

Well, she's _seen shit,_ is the point, and even if there is quite a _lot_ of her blood outside of her body at the moment, she's tough. She'll make it.

At least, that's what she's been telling herself.

Elena's being dragged through the crumbling remains of Shambala by her sort-of ex and _his_ sort-of ex, and they're cursing and flinching and talking in low, soothing voices, and colours are starting to go a bit gray at the edges for her, and Elena is bleeding _everywhere,_ but she's faced worse odds.

When bullets start flying, Nate curses and dives forwards into combat, leaving Chloe alone with Elena's weight. She staggers a moment, small as she is, and then they're moving again, Elena's legs scraping uselessly across the ground.

 _Chloe_ , Elena thinks, now _there's_ a hero she didn't see coming. In fact, Elena was almost certain Chloe would try and get Nate to leave her behind, after she took that grenade, but here Chloe is dragging Elena into cover and swearing at her in a low, desperate voice (and in Drake's world, Elena has learned, cursing is often as close as you get to affection).

 _Life is full of surprises_ , Elena figures, and her dry chuckle comes out as more of a cough. Blood and spit run down over her chin.

Chloe's eyes go narrow, then very wide, and she looks like she wants to bolt, all hair-trigger panic. _Instincts are instincts,_ Elena thinks, and figures maybe Chloe's got the most sensible instincts of any of them, seeing as Elena instincts got her dragged into the middle of a Civil war, and Drake's got all of them into this Shambala mess in the first place.

To her credit, Chloe stays, flight instincts be damned, and flashes Elena a shaky grin. “You're pretty damn tough for a reporter.” 

“This is nothing,” Elena says, trying for a steady voice. “You should have seen the shit we went through with my college paper. Grenade's got nothing on an angry philosophy prof.” 

Chloe laughs weakly, and then the world goes sort of fuzzy for a minute for Elena.

She's gotten very cold around her toes, and when the world lurches back into clarity Chloe is crouching over her stomach, fingers pressed over one of many (too many) shrapnel wounds. 

Blood is pulsing up around Chloe's fingers, and she pushes harder, lips pressed together in a hard line.

“Damnit, god _damnit,_ Elena Fisher you are too stubborn to die from this-”

Elena laugh-coughs again, and Chloe lets out this shaky breath.

“Hah. Thought so. You just love proving me right, don't you?”

But Chloe's voice is too weak to really be called bravado, anymore, and she's still pressing against Elena's stomach like it'll help, like there aren't a half-dozen other cuts still bleeding freely onto the stones.

Elena tries for a grin, but her teeth flash bloody and wet, and Chloe's skin goes a bit green around the eyes.

“I _am_ a team player” Elena tries to say, but her words have started to slur a little, and she thinks sort of distantly, _that can't be good,_ and also, _what terrible last words,_ and then she fades out again.

 

* * *

 

This time when she comes to Drake is with them, helping Chloe haul Elena along, one of her arms for each of them.

“Come on, girl, you're better than this,” Chloe says, and Elena's head is swimming and her mouth is dry, and when she looks down her cuts aren't really _bleeding_ , anymore, but they haven't _clotted,_ either, and she's too out of it to panic much, but in no world is that a good thing.

Nate curses- what else- and picks up the pace, Chloe falling in step. Elena feels her feet drag behind on the ground, dead weight.

She wishes she could at least die on her feet.

 

* * *

 

Elena's out for longer, this time, and when she comes to she's less lucid, head fuzzy and uncertain. She's only dimly aware of Chloe hovering over her, desperate words flowing together.

“Come on, Damnit, Come _on-”_ she's saying, and Elena tries to say something but her mouth just sort of gapes open, breath hissing out weakly.

“Elena,  _come on_ you sonofabitch, if you leave me alone with Drake I'm going to kill him, you can't do that to me-” 

Elena tries again, and the breath is more of a wheeze this time, and Chloe sits back for a moment, runs a hand through her hair, smearing blood all across that side of her head in the process.

Her arms are absolutely _crimson_ to the elbow, her hands shaking, and Elena finally has the presence of mind to say, 

'Tha' mine?” And it's sort of slurred, and Elena can feel drool pooling under her cheek, but the look of relief and delight that flickers across Chloe's face, Elena might well have just recited Hemingway.

“Well, some of it's Nates, and some of it's mine, and some actually belonged to Lazarevic's men, but-”

She's actually _babbleing,_ Elena thinks, and the novelty of it makes her laugh again (or, cough, or drool blood, or whatever), because Chloe's maybe the most swave, collected person Elena's ever met, and _this_ is what's making her come undone?

“Just-” Chloe scrubs a bloody hand over her eyes, leaving gruesome smudges. “Survive this, okay?” There's no hint of sarcasm in her voice, and it makes Elena feel more afraid than the shrapnel, for some reason.

“'ve had worse odds.” She slurs, and Chloe laughs sort of desperately, a high nervous sound.

“I'll bet.” She says. “Tell me the story some time, okay?”

Elena flashes a bloody grin and passes out again.

 

* * *

 

When she comes to, Chloe is pacing ( _she's given up on trying to put pressure on the wounds_ , Elena thinks, distantly. _That's probably bad_ ).

“Hurry up, Nate,” Chloe hisses, eyes fixed on some point in the distance.

Elena can feel her heart slowing down, and she gathers all of her strength. _now or never_.

“Chloe,” She says, voice rasping. “Help me up.”

Chloe spins on her heels, looking like she's seen a ghost.

“ _What_?”

“I said-” The bloodloss is starting to get to Elena, now, _really_ get to her, and was it always so damn _cold_ here _-_ Elena coughs, hard, a rib-rattling, throat-raw sort of cough.

“ _Damnit Chloe_ , I said help me up.”

“Elena, if I move you-”

Elena shakes her head, eyesight fading, . “I'll die _anyway,_ and if I'm gonna die-”

The world drains away before she can finish.

 

* * *

 

“-I wanna do it on my feet.”

There's a surprised little noise from somewhere above her, and Elena opens her eyes to find she's finished her sentence in a different place than she started it.

She's stretched out on a cot, ribs bound whole with bandages, and Nate's holding painfully tight onto one of her hands.

“Elena, I swear to God, if you just said something let me know, because if I find out I'm _hallucinating_ now-”

Elena swallows against a dry, dry throat, coughs firmly. No blood this time.

“Nate?”

Nate sobs in relief, this raw, ragged sound, and when he looks at Elena his eyes are bloodshot, his nose red.

“Thank God,” he says, voice stripped bare. “Thank God.”

Elena feels something like voyeuristic, watching such a raw display of emotion from him, and is almost glad when she slips into unconsciousness again.

 

* * *

 

Weeks of recovery later, Elena has eight neat lines of stitching holding her torso together where shrapnel tried to rip it apart. Chloe stuck around to see her recover, but now that Elena's on her feet again the thief has started to get antsy, and she talks with Nate almost every day about leaving.

 Nate's barely taken his eyes off Elena since she woke up, though, and Chloe seems to know he's not going anywhere without her.

So Chloe pulls Nate aside, talks to him in a voice to low for Elena to hear, and she gives him a long, Meaningful look, and a gentle push in Elena's direction.

 Then Chloe slips off down the mountain, and Elena doesn't see her for nearly a year ( _That's how this line of work is_ , Elena supposes, but it's strange that the woman who saved her life became a stranger so soon after).

 Nate, for his part, comes to stand next to Elena, with stitches of his own tied across the bridge of his nose.

 His right arm is bound up in a sling ( _debris caught me in the elbow,_ he'd said, and made a squelching noise with his mouth), but he slides the left into Elena's hand, squeezes tight.

 “You have no idea,” He says, “How afraid I was that I was going to lose you.”

 Elena pauses, for a moment, looks out over the mountains, and doesn't know quite how to respond.

 “Nate,” she says eventually, “You know I like you. But that is the stupidest thing you've ever said to me.”

 His noise of surprise and affront is nearly enough to make Elena laugh out loud (a bad idea, with this many stitches across her ribs).

 “First when we were looking for El Dorado, and now here-” Elena shakes her head. “Do you know how _many_ times I've watched you _almost_ die?”

 She shakes her head.

 “Do you know how many times you've told me 'stay on the ground, I'll climb up and get it,' and missed a jump? Or landed on a crumbling platform, or even made your jump but grabbed a chain or a giant gear, or-”

 Elena snorts. “Do you know how many times I've watched you _almost_ get blown up by a grenade? How many bullets I've watched you almost take? Hell-”

 She presses her hand low against Nate's stomach. He recoils with the shock, head whipping around the village, but Elena just says,

 “You got shot, remember? And they had to drag you in from the snow half-frozen and half bled out? You think _I_ wasn't afraid, seeing you life that? You think I don't-” She bites off the end of her sentence with an angry huff of air.

 Then, softer, Elena adds; “You've gotten lucky so far, but if you think my heart's not in my throat every time-” she shakes her head. “If you died, Nate, I dunno...”

 Nate ducks his head, lets out a breath. “I guess you owed me one, then” he cracks, and Elena _does_ laugh this time.

 “I guess so.”

 The silence stretches on for a little too long to be comfortable and Nate sighs, wraps an arm around Elena's shoulder. “Just- don't do it again, please.” he says.

 “I don't plan to.” She leans her head into his side. “And- I know it's a fool's errand to ask, but- be careful yourself, okay? There's only so many times I can survive watching you almost not make it.”

 Nate nods slowly. “Okay.” he says. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

 A year and change later, in Yemen, Nate staggers into Elena's hotel room half-drowned, his skin peeling with sun-and-salt burn, his lips chapped bloody, and Elena hugs him so hard he feels like drowning all over again.

 “I though you were gone for good this time,” she whispers, voice ragged.

 “Sorry,” Nate says, words raw with sea water. “Sorry.”

 Elena lets a weeks' tension out of her shoulders and backs up to look him in the eye.

 “I guess I owe you one now,” she says, and Nate's laugh borders on hysterical. Elena helps him onto the couch, his head tucked into her lap. She waits a moment, lets his weight, his  _reality,_ sink in, then;

“I was so afraid, Nate. I was so afraid-” there's a waver in her voice that threatens tears, and Elena closes her mouth with a click, blinking hard.

 “I'm sorry,” he repeats, but not "I won't do it again," and Elena combs her fingers through his matted hair, sighs.

 “I know,” she soothes.“I know."

**Author's Note:**

> Yoo this was SO CLOSE to being Chloe/Elena, like I was writing the parts where Elena was bleeding out (how romantic) and going; "You know...."
> 
> But I decided to stick with my original plan instead. Next time! (The uncharted fandom IS tragically bereft of femslash).
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought!


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